The Barefoot Queen (65 page)

But just as she had assumed, Pedro didn’t dare to disobey his grandfather and from that day on there were no more arguments, although Milagros was careful not to show her happiness.

IT TOOK
them eleven endless days to reach Madrid. Days over the course of which other vehicles and travelers with the same destination joined them while others turned off at crossroads. The roads were bad and dangerous, so people sought each other out. Besides, the carters and muleteers enjoyed certain privileges that annoyed the locals: they could allow their animals to graze, or gather firewood in communal lands, and it was always preferable to defend such rights as a group. Numb, constantly trying to quiet the pathetic crying of a one-and-a-half-year-old girl unable to stand the tedium and monotony, Milagros was encouraged when she sensed they were getting close to the big city. Even the mules quickened their weary pace as the urban noise became increasingly noticeable. The sun had just appeared on the horizon, and the wagon they were in was squeezed between the hundreds of carts and thousands of pack animals that entered the city each day to supply the capital. A multitude of laborers, farmers, merchants and porters, either driving carts small and large, or walking, heavily loaded, or leading mules and oxen, had to enter Madrid personally to sell their products and goods. To prevent the
stockpiling and raising of prices, the King had outlawed dealers, traders and court suppliers acquiring edibles to resell on the outskirts of Madrid or on the roads that led to it; they could only do so after twelve noon, in the plazas and markets, after the inhabitants had had a chance to acquire them in the stalls at their original prices.

Through a slit in the tarpaulin that covered the side of the wagon, Milagros looked out at the jumble of people and animals. She shrank back at the shouting and chaos. What was awaiting them in a city that, day after day, required that entire army of suppliers?

They entered Madrid through the Toledo Gate, and on the street of the same name, in one of the many inns there, the Herradura Inn, they ended a journey that had seemed endless. They had been told to go to the Coliseo del Príncipe theater when they arrived in order to receive instructions. Milagros and old Bartola fought with the other travelers to unload the mattresses and other belongings while Pedro got information from the carter and the couriers.

The sun of a cool but radiant day illuminated the colorful crowd that was entering the city and which they were now a part of. Pedro walked ahead, without any baggage, with the two women following behind dragging the bags and carrying little María. Not many people paid any attention to the group of gypsies as they went down Toledo Street toward the Plaza de la Cebada in one of the most populous and humble neighborhoods in Madrid. The inhabitants wandered among the inns, bars, mattress shops, wicker shops, forges and barber shops that flanked Toledo Street.

Milagros and Bartola took turns carrying María. They were passing the girl from one to the other when Pedro, who had turned his head to see what the holdup was, pounced on them just in time to keep the little one from grabbing one of the shirts that hung from the doorway of a miserable hovel that displayed used clothing.

“Do you want her to get sick?” he scolded them both. “Nasty piece of work!” he announced after staring into the haggard face of the shop’s owner.

His concern arose from the fact that on Toledo Street there were several secondhand clothing shops run by dealers whose gaunt faces showed the fate of many who, out of necessity, bought the clothes taken off the deceased in hospitals. While the gypsies burned the clothes of their dead
after burial, the
payos
bought and sold them, not caring that in their stitches and seams lingered the seeds of all sorts of illnesses, and the skirts, britches and shirts, returned again and again to the shops to await a new poor soul to transmit them to, formed a vicious cycle of death.

Milagros hitched her girl up until she had her settled on her hip; she understood what had caused Pedro’s reaction and she nodded before continuing walking. They reached the Plaza de la Cebada, a large irregular space where, besides executing the prisoners condemned to death by hanging, they sold grain, salt pork and vegetables. Many of the farmers who had walked up Toledo Street with them turned into the plaza. Around the market stalls loitered hundreds of people. Other peasants continued toward the Plaza Mayor.

Pedro, however, guided them to the right, toward a narrow street that bordered the church and the cemetery of San Millán; they continued along it to the plaza of Antón Martín. There, while women and children cooled themselves in the fountain that spouted water from dolphins’ mouths, he asked again for the Coliseo del Príncipe theater. With no luck. A couple of men avoided the gypsy and hurried past. Pedro’s jaw tensed and he stroked the handle of his knife.

“What are you looking for?” he heard when he was about to question a third person.

Milagros observed a constable dressed in black who, truncheon in hand, approached her husband. The men spoke. Some passersby stopped to watch the scene. Pedro showed him his documents. The constable read them and asked for the performer referred to in the papers.

“My wife: Milagros of Triana,” he responded curtly as he pointed to her.

Beside the fountain, Milagros saw herself being scrutinized up and down by the constable and the onlookers. She hesitated. She felt ridiculous with the straw mattress rolled up under one arm, but she lifted her chin and stood tall before them.

“Pride comes before a fall!” shouted the constable in response. “We’ll see if you stay so puffed up on stage, when the groundlings boo you. In Madrid we’ve got plenty of beautiful women but we’re short on good comic players.”

The people laughed and Pedro made to turn on them. The constable stopped him by raising his truncheon to the height of his chest.

“Don’t be so sensitive, gypsy,” he warned, drawling his words. “In a few days, when the theater season begins, all of Madrid and the surrounding areas will criticize … or praise your wife. It’s up to her. There is no in-between. Come with me,” he offered as Pedro calmed down. “The Príncipe Theater is very close by. It’s on my rounds.”

From the plaza itself they climbed a bit, around the Loreto school and into a narrow street to the right. Milagros struggled to maintain the same haughty bearing with which her husband paraded in front of the chorus of Madrileños who had witnessed the scene, but—weighed down with María on one side and the mattress on the other, followed by Bartola snorting and cursing into the back of her neck with the other two mattresses and the rest of the luggage—the few steps’ lead that the constable and Pedro had on them seemed an insurmountable gap. “We’ll come to see you, gypsy!” Milagros heard, and she turned toward a short fat man wearing a large black hat that made him look like a mushroom. “Don’t make us waste our money,” she heard another shout.
Where is the luxury and pageantry of the Count of Fuentevieja’s palace now?
she lamented, irked by the laughter and comments she heard as she passed.

One block more and they stopped at the side street that led to where the Príncipe Theater was; a bit further on, from the corner of Prado Street, the constable pointed to his right, toward a building with straight lines and a sober stone face whose pitched roof extended far above its neighbors.

“There you have it,” he indicated proudly. “The Coliseo del Príncipe.”

Milagros tried to get an idea of the theater’s dimensions, but the narrowness of the street she was facing made it impossible. She turned her head to the left, toward a continuous windowless wall that extended along Prado Street.

“The garden of the Santa Ana monastery,” explained the constable when he realized where the gypsy girl’s gaze fell. Then he pointed to the upper part of the same street. “There, in the atrium that leads to the monastery, there is a vaulted niche with a statue of the Virgin’s Holy Mother whom many of your race come to worship. You should commend yourself to her before you go in,” he said, laughing.

Milagros left María on the dirt floor. Santa Ana! In her parish in Triana she had sung carols for the
payos
after being humiliated by the choirmaster and the musicians. How far off those days now seemed! Yet
the same saint appeared beside the theater where she would have to sing before
payos
again. It couldn’t be a mere coincidence; it must mean something …

“Let’s go!” The constable’s order distracted her from her thoughts. The gypsies were about to head to the theater when the constable stopped them with a wave of his truncheon and explained. “That’s the audience’s entrance. The players go in through the back door, on Lobo Street.”

They went around the block until they found the door. The constable spoke with a doorman who watched the entrance and allowed them in right away.

“Are you planning on going in with a straw mattress under your arm?” scoffed the man after inviting Milagros to follow him. “The others can’t come in!” he warned Pedro and Bartola right away.

Pedro managed to get through, as her husband. “Who is going to stop me from accompanying her?” he said arrogantly. The mattress stayed outside, with Bartola, María and the other baggage. As soon as the door closed behind them, they found themselves in a large chamber onto which opened a series of rooms.

“The dressing rooms,” commented the constable.

Milagros didn’t look at them; nor did she look at the various armchairs arranged beside one of the walls that had caught her husband’s eye. The gypsy girl’s attention was fixed on the back of the set: a huge, simple white canvas that, among pieces of stage machinery, almost entirely filled the space in front of the area reserved for the audience. Through it she could make out the shadows of people: some moved and gestured with their arms, others remained still. She couldn’t make out what they were saying. Were they reciting? She heard a shouted order and there was silence, followed by another command. The figure of a woman gesticulated wildly. A shadow approached the woman. They argued. The woman’s voice, obstinate, impudent, rose above the other until finally silencing it. The man was left alone. Milagros could see that his arms were slack at his sides. The woman disappeared from her vision, but not her shrieks, which gained strength as they approached along one side of the curtain.

“Who does that boor think he is!” The shout preceded the inopportune appearance of a middle-aged woman, blonde, well dressed, as exuberant as she was agitated. “Telling me, me, how I should sing my role! Me, the great Celeste!”

On her way to the dressing room, the woman passed by Milagros without even looking at her.

“This show won’t last two days!” continued Celeste, indignant, but her discomfiture vanished as if by magic when she came across Pedro García a few paces further on.

The constable, by his side, removed his hat in deference.

“And who are you?” the woman questioned the gypsy, planting herself in front of him with her hands on her hips.

Milagros couldn’t see the smile her husband received that sudden interest with: behind her, from the same place the woman had appeared, more than twenty people rushed in. “Celeste,” clamored a man, “don’t be upset.” “Celeste …” They didn’t notice her presence either; they passed her by, from right to left, until they were surrounding Celeste, Pedro and even the constable. Meanwhile, Pedro’s gypsy gaze, with his eyes slightly squinted, had managed to make the woman stutter.

“No …” she tried to silence the requests that were coming in; she was captivated by the gypsy’s lovely face.

“Celeste, please, think it over,” was heard. “The leading man …”

At the mere mention of the leading man, the woman reacted.

“I won’t hear of it!” she howled, pushing the others away from her. “Where is my sedan-chair? Send in my bearers!” She looked around until she located two scruffy men who quickly answered her call. Then she made as if to head to one of the sedan chairs, but first she drew close to Pedro. “Will I see you again?” she asked in a sweet whisper, her lips brushing the gypsy’s ear.

“As sure as my name is Pedro,” he assured her in a similar tone.

Celeste smiled with a hint of naughtiness, turned and climbed the box of her sedan chair, leaving an aroma of her perfume behind her. The bearers grabbed the two poles, lifted the chair and with them, amidst murmurs, headed to the door that opened onto Lobo Street.

“Too much woman for you,” the constable warned him when the door closed again and the murmurs turned into arguments. “Half of Madrid is chasing after her and the other half wishes they had the balls.”

“In that case,” Pedro bragged with his gaze still on the door, “half of Madrid will end up envying me and the other half applauding me.” Then he turned toward the constable, who was pulling down his hat, and drilled him with his gaze. “What half are you in?”

The man didn’t know what to say. Pedro sensed he might try to pull rank and he quickly said, “There are always a lot of other beautiful women flocking around that type. You get me? If you stick with me …” The gypsy let a few seconds pass. “… you could also be the object of envy.”

“Who will be the object of envy?”

They both turned. Milagros had managed to make her way through the people and was now beside them.

“I will,” answered Pedro, “for having the most beautiful wife in the kingdom.”

The gypsy draped an arm over his wife’s shoulders and pulled her toward him. His attention, however, remained fixed on the constable: he needed someone to introduce him to the capital, and who better than a representative of the King? Finally, the man nodded.

“Let’s find the director of the company,” he said immediately, as if that movement of his head hadn’t been directed exclusively at Pedro. He grabbed an actor by the arm without thinking twice and asked, “Where is Don José?”

“Why do you want to know?” the actor retorted, throwing off the hand gripping his arm.

The constable hesitated in the face of the actor’s boldness.

“There is a new comic player,” he explained, pointing to Milagros.